ASHLAND, Ore. – There are so many parents in this free-spirited, unconventional small town who won't get their kids vaccinated that federal researchers are paying money just to hear their side of things. On Saturday, 80 locals will get $50 apiece to talk about their worries over the risks of childhood shots.

"One of the basic tenets of my decision-making is mistrust of the government, a mistrust of the pharmaceutical companies, and mistrust of the big blanket thing that says this is what everybody has to do," says Tracy Harding, an organic farming consultant and mother of two.

"I get the public health standpoint," she said. "I am still questioning (vaccines') safety."

Nationally, there is a budding movement of parents who are getting exemptions from laws requiring children to get vaccinated before attending school. The exemptions are one explanation the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives for a spike in measles cases. The government recommends as many as 10 vaccines before a child is 6, plus boosters along the way.

Dr. Ben Schwartz, an adviser to the National Vaccine Program, said the meeting in Ashland is one of three where the government is paying average citizens to give their views to inform officials charting the direction of vaccine research for the next five years. A similar meeting was held in Birmingham, Ala., and another is set for Indianapolis, both sites with more mainstream views about vaccines.

But Ashland stands apart from the mainstream.

The town of 20,000 on the flanks of the Siskiyou Mountains in southwestern Oregon has always been different. In the early 20th century it was on the Chautauqua lecture circuit, and the sulfurous waters of Lithia Springs drew visitors looking for a cure for what ailed them.

Today, it has one of the highest rates in the nation for vaccine exemptions — 28 percent and rising in kindergartens, compared with about 4 percent statewide. One alternative school has 67 percent.

A liberal outpost in a conservative region, Ashland likes to go its own way. The city has its own water and electric utilities, and was a pioneer promoting solar energy, high-speed Internet, and dog parks. It has serious debates about whether to cut down trees to expand the library or whether to allow a woman to ride her bicycle naked in the Fourth of July parade.

For years, Dr. Jim Shames, a physician who prefers a down vest to a lab coat, has argued the benefits of vaccines with Harding, his next-door neighbor.

As Jackson County's chief medical officer, Shames would like every child immunized. Ashland always has some whooping cough around, which can be devastating to babies, but has seen no spike in measles. Still, Shames fears the community is vulnerable because so many international visitors come to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Southern Oregon University.

Shames has been working with nursing students from Oregon Health & Science University on a pamphlet that would promote immunization.

While doing interviews for that pamphlet, nursing student Shauna Gargus, who had her own two kids vaccinated, found many parents distrust mainstream medicine. They tend to believe their friends rather than medical research. Their biggest single fear is that the shot for measles, mumps and rubella could cause their children to become autistic, despite solid scientific studies that show no evidence of that.

"The fear is real for parents, and it overshadows the research," she said. "This is my hometown. This is where I grew up. I care about the community here. I just really would like to not make this a browbeating issue."

Harding is suspicious of the need to inject so many vaccines into small children. She stopped vaccinating her son, Frank, after his first shot as a baby triggered hours of crying. Her daughter, Stella, got a tetanus shot, but that is all.

Until now, Tyre Dawn has depended on organic food and plenty of playtime outdoors to keep her 4-year-old son, Lukyan, healthy. But she is planning to open a preschool in the spring, and with so many children around, she is now rethinking her policy.

"It is essential in these times for everyone to look more closely at the choices they are making," she said.

Jennifer Margulis moved here with her husband and three kids from Massachusetts, where her mother is a cellular biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Though she chuckles at some of Ashland's personality quirks, she embraces the city's strong sense of community and many people's distrust of mainstream medicine.

"I never questioned the efficacy or intelligence of doing vaccines until I was in the hospital with my newborn daughter and a doctor tried to get me to give her hepatitis B vaccine," she said. "Hepatitis B is a sexually transmitted disease. I knew I didn't have hepatitis B. I knew my husband didn't have it. I knew there was no way she would come in contact with anyone with hepatitis B.

"You have this tiny, frog-like baby and they want to shoot her up with things."

Afterward, Margulis' pediatrician supported her choice. "I decided it was my responsibility as a parent to research each and every vaccine to make an informed, intelligent decision, not to just follow what doctors told me," she said.

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:rainbowflower: Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. :rainbowflower:

I totally agree with certain vacinations. Like: polio, smallpox, tuberculous, diptheria, pertussin, tetnus, think those are the regular ones given to children. I am of the opinion that if the world stopped innoculations completely, it is the perfect time for many of these evil strains of disease to resurface. I am not overly knowledgeable, but I would never turn back time and not innoculate my children, or myself when I was a child. No regrets here. Have a wonderful and awesome life, day, health. Cindi

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There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee. Robert Service

Been getting a Flue shot every year since 1978. Had a bout with the stuff in 1977 at the age of 25 and it really kicked my butte. Anything is better than going through that again. Especially, now that I'm a Quadriplegic and 55 years old.

i have been places where children are not routinely vaccinated. the small risk associated with vaccines is better that the large risk associated with disease. parents have a right to make medical decisions about their children, but "i don't trust ----" is not an informed way to make a decision. going to a place where children suffer permanent disability or death from preventable diseases, and deciding if that risk is better for their children, is.

if these children bring disease into the community, it is the ill and elderly that will suffer.

guess i should add that i think vaccines for things like cervical cancer, are probably not worth the risk right now. i may change my opinion on that later, but behavior modification and early detection seem less risky than this vaccine at the moment.

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Okay, here is my take on it and unfortunately I have had alot of experience with this.While vaccinations do have their place they are over done.The first problem I will address is the amount of vaccines given to developing children.Back when we were growing up or even when my oldest was growing up 20 years ago you only had to have what 4 shots to get into school.Now children need 26 vaccinations by the time they are kindergarten and antoher 12 or so after that.Why? Is there a reason for this other than the vaccine makers getting rich? Because my kids who only had 4 shots never got sick with some disease that now all of a sudden you need to be vaccinated with.Is anyone here got some bad disease that they should have been inocculated against years ago? These new vaccines are unneccesary.The chicken pox vaccine is pointless. Kids get the chicken pox and move on. Now you get the vaccine which is mandated by law and then it wears off when they are an adult. Its a fact that this vaccine does not offer a lifetime immunity.So now what, it wears off and an adult gets it and gets much sicker than if they would have gotten them as a child. While I agree than there are definite vaccines that need to be given I believe all these boosters are wholly unnecessary.They make children get 4 booster shots for most of the basic vaccines.I like the rest of the adult population only had 1 and I don't hear of anyone getting these diseases.If you vaccinate your child and then go to the doctor and get their titres drawn to test their immunity 99.9 percent of the time the child has more than sufficient immunity to that disease.I know this because I have done it. My child had sky high levels of immunity against all of these diseases after only one series of shots.I have a problem with the fact that the board of doctors who help to make up the vaccine advisory board and make the mandated vaccine schedule for children includes a doctor that actually developed yet another new vaccine and holds the patent to it.He gets money for every vaccine purchased and he pushed to get it included into the schedule and he succeeded.

I further have a problem (2nd problem)with the contents of these vaccines.Here is just a little of the ingredients in a vaccine:anti freezealuminumaborted fetal tissueleadmonkey kidneymsgcadmiumdog kidneyacetibeantibioticsyeastsulfatesglycerinformaldehydepig bloodanimal virusescow heartrabbit braincalf serumMERCURYThe list goes on and on and its not propaganda since the vaccine makers have publicly stated this.

So not only are we injecting our children with known neurotoxins we are doing this the day they enter the world.These poor babies are only a day old when they recieve their first vaccine. Their immune systems are not equipped to handle live viruses and neurotoxins.The vaccine given is the hepatitis shot which for this particular one you need to either have sex or use hyperdermic needles in order to contract it.Why is this given to a one day old child when it can easily be given at a later date.That is the third problem I have with the vaccine schedule.They are giving vaccines far too young to children and interfering with the development and causing life long issues in many.Many of these vaccines could be spread out and pared down.Personally if I were to have a baby right now I would make darn sure they didn't recieve any vaccine at a day old.Once their system is more mature then I would agree to it and only certain ones.After this day old baby gets this vaccine he goes to the doctor for a check up a very short time later where he recieves 4 vaccines at once, 2 in each thigh.Each of these vaccines contains more than one live virus, the mmr is 3, dpt is 3 etc.A one month old baby is getting injected with as many as 12 live viruses when his system probably has not even recoverd from the one he got in the hospital and his body has not been able to detox all the neurotoxins and poisons already in his system from that one.Then at 4 months of age he goes back for the next 4 vaccines and gets hit with some more live viruses and heavy metals and poisons. I think you get the picture here, it goes on and on.Think about how many live viruses and toxins a one year old child's body now has the burden to bear.

Too many vaccines and too many neurotoxins.The CDC needs to clean them up and pare them down.THe vaccine schedule needs to be revised. They need to spread out these vaccines to a reasonable and acceptable time line and they sure as heck better get the mercury and other toxins out.

The next problem is that the cdc lies. Many people are under the impression that mercury was removed from all vaccines when in fact that is not true.Its still in many of the flu shots and in a dangerous amount too.Its also still in many vaccines except they claim it to be in trace amounts and what they consider low enough to be considered mecury free.

If these doctors and the CDC are so concerned about our kids getting vaccinated then why not do it for free? Why do they recieve $1.00 in their pocket for every vaccine used?There is so much money involved and it is so corrupt that its sickening.There is alot of information about the Simpsonwood minutes you can look into. When a bunch the advisory committee met in private about the new vaccine schedule there was clearly alot of evidence that these doctors knew the vaccines were unsafe.One doctor even stated that he would sign off on the schedule but that he would never allow his own grandson to recieve some of these vaccines.How sad and corrupt.

The pharmaceutical companies knew that mercury was damaging children way before these cases ever came to light.In fact they were so concerned about getting sued that they petitioned the Bush adminstration for help, they donated millions of dollars to Bush.In the end they had they attached a rider to the Homeland Security act making it so that they were protected from lawsuits.Why did they do this if they had nothing to worry about.No one knew this even happened since we were so consumed with post 911 and making the country safe that no one noticed the rider until it was too late.

There is a branch of the government called Vaccine Court and they have been quietly paying off parents of vaccine injured children for years.Millions of dollars have been paid to date. After all the government is responsible now for the mandated vaccine schedule they created and enforced.

It was common knowlede that mercury was a dangerous substance even 100 years ago but they still allowed our babies to be injected with it.Eli lily invented thimerisol which is made up of 50 percent mercury which is the tradename for the mercury in the vaccines.When the FDA came into existance Eli Lily was grandfathered in.Thimerisol had been widely used in teething ointments and talc.At the same time this was created a new mysterious disease popped up, Pink's disease or accrodynia.It caused the gums to blister, turn red and bleed as well as the children's bottoms.Hmm, teething cream and talc.These children also began to have many developmental problems.... exactly like autism.Actually the same exact symtoms as autism.Strangely autism, pink's disease and mercury poisoning all share the same exact symptoms, Exact.You can look it up. Type in to google mercury poisoning and autism comparison table and you will see.Go look up pink's disease and compare there.So anyway, they actually did discover it was the thimerisol and removed it from the cream and talc and lo and behold, Pink's disease disappeared from the world forever.They did do some testing on thimerisol and discovered when they injected a slew of dogs with it they all died so they came to the conclusion that thimerisol should not be given to dogs.Then they gave it to a bunch of elderly patients and they all died, so they concluded that you should nto give thimerisol to elderly people.So no elderly people or dogs, but its probably okay to give it to billions of children.When some vaccines were sent overseas to our troupes they were labeled as hazardous waste due to the thimerisol in them.Hazardous waste.... sounds like a good idea to inject kids with it.

Well this is getting quite long so I will leave it at this. The vaccine schedule is completely insane and I think these parents have every right to refuse to give 36 vaccines.I think that the basic ones are important but you do not need 4 booster shots and you certainly do not need to vaccinate a one day old child for anything never mind something they couldn't in a million years contract at that age.

If something drastic is not done immediately there is going to be h#@l to pay. Parents are not going to vaccinate their kids, waivers are commonly used now in the schools in order to bypass the mandated vaccines.Disease will return.

Also, there is going to be a world full of kids on social security and medicare which creates more financial disaster for this country. They will either be on it for the diseases they get if they survive or they will or actually many are on it for the damage done to them by the vaccines the government forced on them.Then there is the vaccine court who is paying loads of money to parents right now.Most people don't have any idea the money that is being spent in this country to cover vaccine damaged kids through medicare, social security and the vaccine court. That alone is a huge financial black hole. Its and endless amount of money being spent and the end is nowhere in sight.

If all parents do vaccinate we will face a world full of disabled children, oh wait we already have that.

I'm all on board with Natalie WRT vaccines - but I keep my thoughts on them simple. They are hammering on a child's immune system before the immune system can handle it. I will not argue with a parent who believes their child's autism was brought on via a vaccination because I've seen it happen with my own eyes to the child of a friend of mine. A fifteen month, bouncing, lively, absolutely normal boy was turned into a dead-eyed, introverted, severely autistic child within days of a vaccine. Oh, I know, it's anecdotal and can't be proven and blah, blah, blah.....of course they can't allow the proof out, imagine the lawsuits, imagine the pharmaceutical industry (who makes some people plenty of money) being brought to its knees because of the lawsuits. Can't have that!

the argument about vaccinating or not aside, the protection for companies goes back to hillary care. most pharmaceutical companies have gotten out of vaccine manufacturing. there are two reasons. one is that there is no money in it on the manufacturing end. the government buys about 1/2 the vaccines at a reduced price. this was hillarys childrens program that forced companies to provide vaccines to the "poor" at a below market price. the program provided no protection from ANY kind of lawsuite.

on the one hand you have companies forced to provied a product at a controlled cost, and on the other forced to defend against billions of dollars legal challenges.

i do think that parents should be able to make the decision....but i have enough age on me to remember birth defects, encephalitis, damaged hearts, and epidemics of things going through schools. diseases that most parents would not recognize these days if they tripped over them. it was some relief not to have to search my grandchildren for the rash of measles every time they got a cough or runny nose...then have to worry about ice baths when a temp spiked to 105...then worry about brain swelling......

always a trade off.........

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.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

My kids had the normal shots for school. I had probably every shot possible as I traveled around the world in the military. My wife has certain shots required for her nursing and travel job. Every person in my family has had the same. We read the reports, we stay informed. No big deal.

Mine had all the normal shots, too, but that was 23 and 19 years ago - things have truly changed since then. The amount of vaccines that are pumped into young children truly amazes me. Better living through pharmaceuticals :roll:

Its a big deal to alot of people. The ones that were affected by it. If those are your kids in the avitar they look young, young enough to not have recieved the mercury laden ones.Still though, many who think they are unaffected have not seen the full result yet.Just because a child doesn't end up with autism does not mean they won't have learning disabilities.The other thing is that, there are so many people who are all for living organically,eat organically, don't use pesticides and some beekeepers may decide to not medications in their hives, yet they don't question their kids getting 36 vaccines(4 boosters of the same vaccine) and the actual contents in them.There are people who spend more time researching their next vehicle than their children's vaccines.They just bring them in and hold them down without even asking for so much as the insert that comes with the vaccine never mind actual research.They have absolutely no idea what is in them and what the risks associated with them are. They just blindly trust the government, the government not you beloved pediatrician is the one in charge of your children's health and welfare when it comes to vaccines.I said it before and I will say it again, if my 20 year old daughter who received a total of 4 vaccines(which is all that was mandated) to get into school, and all the generations before her are healthy and there are no disease present in our society right now why are we giving these children so many more vaccines?Because we are protected by the same vaccine schedule that was in effect 20 years ago.These vaccines are not needed. As a matter of fact the developer of the chicken pox vaccine stated that the reason behind inventing that was so that parents would not have to be inconvenienced by missing a week of work when their kid gets the chicken pox. :-\Seriously? I am sure they are also not making any money off of that vaccine either.So now what, the vaccine as I was told by my doctor and you can look it up online, does not offer a lifetime of immunity.It wears off and many 18-20 year old kids are not going to go back to their doctor and ask for a second shot. So now what happens? There are alot of parents getting vaccine waivers so you will see chicken pox still around, it will not be eradicated and now these adults are going to get it and get it bad.Its not dangerous for a child to get it at all but its very very dangerous for an adult to get them.

Its a pathetic situation when a pharmaceutical company sponsors a free movie for a vaccination day.When Horton hears a who they had a drive up window for the kids to get vaccines and then they got a free movie ticket.Thats right, free admission for a vaccine. The poor were driving up in droves and no one was checking if a child had previously been vaccinated for the same things they were getting that day.Jim Carrey who is on the board of Generation Rescue put a halt to that immediately.

I too agree with a lot of the vaccines. I don't like the chicken pox vaccine. Stupid, our kids are going to pay for that one later. Half the kids that had the vaccine get CP anyway.Too often vaccines are just blanketed on the kids whether they need them or not. I'm surprised the herpes one for girls isn't mandatory yet, it doesn't matter to me, my daughter won't get it unless she thinks later on that unfortunately she needs it, then she gets it herself.

Too many people think these things are mandatory and just go along with them because they are told to. Most of them are not.

Vaccines have done a lot of good but I think that the age at which they are administered or required needs to be re-examined. IMO, too many kids are getting to many vaccinations before their body has developed enough to really cope with the materials used in the vaccines. When I was in school(Eisenhower Administratiion) the 1st public vaccines were given in large quanitites to the school children, most of those children where 6 years an up. True, delaying the vaccines will endanger a certain amount of children to chickenpox, measles, etc, but the body is more fully developed and so is more able to handle the vaccine without the side effects of autism etc.

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Life is a school. What have you learned? :brian: The greatest danger to our society is apathy, vote in every election!

Mine had all the normal shots, too, but that was 23 and 19 years ago - things have truly changed since then. The amount of vaccines that are pumped into young children truly amazes me.

As recently as 1983 there were 10 shots recommended for children between the age of birth and 6 years, now it's 36 shots. http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/cdc_comparison.pdfAs you said in an earlier post, it's far too much for a developing immune system to handle. I have no problem believing that any one of them, taken alone, is very low risk; but I believe that the sheer number of them is overwhelming to a developing toddler. It actually reminds me of many of the CCD discussions I've read, where many researchers believe it's not a single pathogen, but a combination of stresses that have simply overwhelmed the bees.

I believe that as well and now to add to the toxic burden these children are already carrying in their bodies from the vaccines, the world itself. All the pollution and exposure to toxins that we all have on a daily basis and these kids are like a chemical sponge. It is much harder for them to detox out the everyday chemicals they are exposed to when their bodies are overwhelmed by the live viruses they were injected with, their immune systems and liver are overburdened and cannot do their job properly.Thus begins the downward spiral for many into autism, learning disablities,seizure disorders,mitochondrial disorder, asthma etc. All of these are conncected in one way or another to the battering their systems have taken. There is alot of research proving the connections to many ailments to the immune system suppression by vaccines.

.....The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved.....

Really? Because I don't know anyone who even uses disinfectant gels or the disinfectant handsoap that is on the market. I have never bought the handsoap with the germ fighting agents in them and choose to let the kids develop their own immunity to germs, which is a point that goes back to the vaccines harming their immune systems, gotta make up for it somewhere.They must be chasing my chickens around the yard and rolling on the ground with my 5 dogs wrapped in bubble wrap, I wonder how they do that. It must be hard for them to pick up all those bugs with the bubble wrap around their hands, maybe we should get some rubber gloves.Actually, since my older kids spend their time in a third world country every summer doing mission work maybe I should send them some bubble wrap and disinfectant gel.

All those gels and cleansers only get rid of 99.9% of the germs. I figure that is the first time around. They don't kill any of the descendants of those that survived. Now we have super germs.

And use of those cleansers and gels prevents the body from building up natural immunities to the germs that are out there. We are cramming vaccines on our children before their body is sufficiently mature to handle it and at a rate that is also too fast to be totally effective without side affects from too much too soon. I think we need to slow down, spread out the application of vaccines and also let nature work in developing natural immunities to the simpler non-lethal illnesses.

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Life is a school. What have you learned? :brian: The greatest danger to our society is apathy, vote in every election!